A new fund has been set up to help students and employees at Western Michigan University who are struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Solidarity Fund went online Thursday. Assistant professor Vickie Edwards is one of the organizers:
"There are a lot of students and folks who were not making a lot of money to begin with that suddenly find themselves unable to pay rent. They're having additional costs. Maybe they were working in a restaurant as a second job; that's very typical among students. And so, we realized that we have to do something."
Edwards says the fund will also help Western employees who've had their hours and paychecks cut by the outbreak. She says it's raised nearly 47-hundred dollars so far. There's a link to the fund's website at w-m-u-k dot org.